Ellis didn’t even bother to knock before she came into her house ten minutes later. She had a key to use for emergencies, and for her this must have been one. “Belinda?” she called, but Belinda didn’t have the energy to answer. She sat on the closed toilet seat, trying not to think about Carter but failing miserably.
It was Cherri who opened the door. Her eyes filled with tears when she saw her. “What happened?”
Ellis pushed past Cherri and knelt before Belinda. “You’ve been crying. Are you hurt?” Ellis asked calmly, but there was no denying the worry in her eyes.
She shook her head. “I had sex with him.” She didn’t mean to worry her friends, but she was shocked at her stupidity.
“Come on, Belinda. Let’s get out of here and talk.” She turned to Cherri. “I think we are going to need some reinforcements.”
“I’ll order pizza with the works. And double fudge brownies. Does that sound good?”
“That sounds perfect.” Ellis tried to lead her to her couch but Belinda wouldn’t let her. She couldn’t sit there. Not where she’d had sex with him. Not so soon. Maybe not ever.
“Dining room, please.”
“Oh. Oh! Mikey and I had sex for the first time on my couch, too. I couldn’t look at it for weeks without blushing. Even now I get a little excited when we sit on it sometimes.”
“Oh, Ellis! Gross.”
“What?” Cherri appeared behind them, her phone still in her hand.
“Nothing. Ellis is just the queen of TMI.”
“I may be the queen of TMI. But you’re the queen of no information at all. I think it’s past time that you spilled your guts to us.”
She eased herself into a chair. Ellis and Cherri took seats on either side of her. It was past time she told them her story. She knew that. She just didn’t know how to explain to them something she couldn’t wrap her head around herself. “Carter came over. We got in an argument. I hit him. He kissed me and then we had sex on my couch.”
“You actually hit him?” Cherri’s eyes bulged a little.
“Bastard probably had it coming,” Ellis huffed. “Start from the beginning, Belinda. How do you know this guy?”
“He came to my store looking for a gift for his mother and he asked me out. At first I didn’t want to go out with him. Carter is…” She shook her head. “He’s different from every other guy I have dated.”
“He’s gorgeous,” Cherri said. “He reminds me of Cary Grant.”
Ellis spun to face Cherri. “You’ve seen him?”
“Yeah, I was with Belinda when she bumped into him at the park.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“It wasn’t my place to tell you.”
Ellis made a little miffed sound before she turned back to Belinda. “Go on.”
“He’s a Lancaster,” she said as if that explained everything. “His grandfather was a senator. And he’s from old money. He’s serious and super focused and really quiet and we had nothing in common, but there was something about him. I felt like there was a whole other man on the inside that was trying to get out. So I went out with him. He took me to this little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant where we drank three-dollar margaritas and shared nachos.”
“He sounds cheap,” Ellis said, rolling her eyes.
Belinda shrugged. “Maybe he was but I was glad we went there. I would have felt out of place if he had taken me somewhere fancy. He made me nervous enough as it was, and I babbled on like an idiot that night. I talked for two hours straight and I was sure when he dropped me off that night I was never going to see him again. I wasn’t sure why he’d asked me out in the first place.”
“Because you’re beautiful and sexy,” Ellis said.
“Because you’re smart and funny and you’ve got an ass that no man can keep his eyes off,” Cherri added.
“He told me he liked me that night. He, who barely said two words all night, told me that if he didn’t see me again he would regret it for the rest of his life.”
“That sounds so sweet,” Cherri gushed.
“It sounds like a line,” Ellis said.
“It was sweet,” she admitted. “And I reached up and kissed him and before I knew it I was inviting him to stay. I couldn’t get rid of him after that. I didn’t want to. I had this quiet, beautiful man who wanted to be with me all the time. I thought it was just for the sex, which was amazing, but a month into seeing each other he was watching me get dressed and he asked me to marry him.”
“Had you just had sex?” Ellis asked. “Men always do crazy things after good sex. How do you think I get my husband to take me to the garment district?”
“No, that’s the thing. We hadn’t had sex that day. I was getting ready to meet his parents for the first time when he looked up at me and said, ‘I’m glad you’re meeting my parents today. I want them to meet the woman I’m going to marry.’ I looked at him for a second and before I even got the chance to think, he asked me to marry him. I said yes and I knew as soon I did that it was a mistake. But I loved him, or I thought I did. And instead of meeting his parents for lunch we went to the courthouse.”
“Oh, Belinda.” Ellis reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “It took you three years to decide your college major. Four months to pick out a car. Two years to pick out this place. You never move so quickly.”
“I know. I should have said no, but I thought I might never find a man who made me as happy as he did.”
“What happened?” Cherri asked.
“A lot of things. His mother hated me on sight, told me that I wasn’t good enough for her son, that the only thing I saw in him was dollar signs. She and her husband offered me half a million dollars to leave him.”
Ellis shut her eyes. “I hope you let her have it. I hope you verbally tore her a new one.”
“I didn’t. I wanted to make things work. I didn’t want to be the reason that Carter and his mother didn’t get along. I simply told her she was wrong and that I had everything I ever wanted from Carter.”
“What did Carter say when you told him?” Cherri asked.
“I never told him. Not even when she sent a check to my job. I mailed it back to her, which only seemed to make her hate me more. At first I didn’t understand why Carter married me. It wasn’t for love. He never once said he loved me. I think he did it to get back at his parents. Things were never easy between them, and I represented everything they hated. He’s a little bit of a rebel in his own way. He didn’t go into the family business. He’s got tattoos. He almost doesn’t fit with the life he was born into.”
“He sounds like a regular badass,” Ellis said drily. Belinda shot her a look. “I’m sorry. Go on.”
“Suddenly I found myself thrust into Carter’s world. I had to go to charity events with him and be his date for work functions and on Sundays we ate dinner with his family and the whole time I would hear whispers about me. I somehow became the tart who tricked Carter Lancaster into marrying her. People treated me like I was dirt but I stuck with him. I would have stuck with him forever because I wanted to prove them wrong, but then his ex showed up at our door one day. His ex-wife, a person I never knew existed, and she was holding a baby that looked exactly like my husband. I left him that day and I hadn’t seen or heard from Carter since. But then he showed up here.”
“What do you think he wants?” Cherri asked.
“He moved here. His best friend is Steven Oliver. They have their own architecture design firm downtown.”
“I think he wants you back,” Cherri said. “Why else would he move here?”
“I don’t think he does. If he did, he wouldn’t have waited four years to come after me.”
“I want to believe that,” Ellis said. “Trust me, I want to grab a knife, go to his house, and slice off his balls. But something is not meshing. What man picks up his life and moves to the hometown of a woman he has no feelings for?”
*
Carter opened his eyes when he felt a forty
-pound weight settle on his chest. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said to his daughter as he kissed her forehead. Her curly hair was a matted tangled mess and she had pillow lines on her cheeks, but the sight of her on his chest made him smile.
“Good morning, Daddy. Did you sleep good?”
“I did,” he lied. He hadn’t been sleeping much since he slept with Belinda. His nights were spent unwillingly reliving that afternoon. All he could think about was how she felt against him, and how she smelled and the husky sound of her voice when she moaned. But he also remembered her tears and how hurt she was. He never wanted that. He never wanted to be a witness to that kind of pain. He had been so set on divorcing her, on starting his life over without her, but these past few days he had been doubting his decision.
“You look real tired,” Ruby said, touching his still-bruised cheek.
“That’s because my daughter woke me up at six o’clock on Saturday morning.”
“I wanted to talk to you,” she said softly.
“About what?” he asked cautiously. He knew she was still curious about Belinda, but she hadn’t said a word about her since the day of the trip. Belinda might be an uncomfortable subject for him, but he never wanted his daughter to be afraid to talk to him about anything. “You can talk to me about anything, you know.”
“I know. I wanted to talk about what we was gonna do today.”
He was behind at work and he knew he should spend the day catching up but the world wouldn’t end if he forgot about work for a couple of days. He had been preoccupied this past week. He owed his daughter a day. “What would you like to do?”
“I want to go to the park with the lake and I want you to take me in a rowboat and I want to look at the sky.”
“Really?” That was the last thing he’d expected to hear from her, but then again she wasn’t the typical five-year-old. “You like looking at the sky?”
“Yeah. I like to see stuff in the clouds.”
“Okay, beautiful. We’ll go to the park and I’ll take you in a rowboat and we’ll look at the sky. How about we have some breakfast first? Maybe pancakes.”
That earned him a frown. “I don’t think you should make pancakes, Daddy.”
“Why not?” He grinned at her. “Don’t you like them?”
Her eyes went wide. She was an honest kid but a sweet one, and he could see her struggling not to hurt his feelings. “I think we should make cereal instead.”
“How about I buy you breakfast? I know a place that makes pancakes that are way better than mine.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling. “That’s a good idea.”
CHAPTER 8
Gone fishing …
Belinda woke with a start. Her cell phone was ringing and someone was pounding on her front door. For a moment she was in a complete daze, unable to do anything but lie in her bed and process what she was hearing. Her phone went to voice mail but the door … Somebody was at her door. She looked at the clock on her nightstand. Just after six AM.
Who the hell could be at my door this damn early?
She made herself get up and shoved her arms into her bathrobe so she could get down the stairs to make the awful pounding stop. Her neighbors were probably ready to skin her alive, and she didn’t blame them. Whoever was at her door was going to get it. She wished she had grabbed a baseball bat on the way down, but it was probably for the better. A girl like her couldn’t do hard time in jail.
She finally reached the door and flung it open to see her father standing there in full fishing gear.
“Bill Junior!” He barged in and gave her a rough hug, causing her to wonder if he really thought she was a boy instead of a girl.
“Hi, Daddy.” Her anger melted away. She couldn’t really be mad at her father. Slightly annoyed, yes, but not angry.
“No time for chitchat, Junior. Go get into your gear. We need to get to the lake. The fish are biting today.”
“I’m sorry, but did we have a father–daughter date I’m forgetting about?”
“Nope. I wanted to see my kid so here we are. I’ve been wondering about you since your friend Cucumber called.”
She didn’t even bother to correct him. “I’m fine, Daddy. I promise.”
“Good. Now go get dressed. I got a special pole for you in my truck and a cooler full of beers. It’s going to be a good day.”
She was supposed to go into the store this afternoon, and she had planned to spend her morning doing absolutely nothing, but she couldn’t tell her father no, even if fishing was the last possible thing she wanted to do.
*
Carter and Ruby arrived at the lake a little after eight that morning. The park surrounding it was mostly empty this brisk morning. Only a few joggers and a couple of guys fishing. Carter envied the joggers. He used to run in the park before he had Ruby, but since she’d come into his life he’d had to stop his daily morning runs in the park. He now had only a treadmill to look forward to each day. Maybe when she got older he could start running outdoors again. Or maybe she could ride her bike alongside him while he jogged. He wouldn’t mind having her with him.
“Can I hold one of the paddles?”
He looked down at his daughter, who had blueberry syrup dripped all down her shirt, and handed one over. It was really too big for her to handle, but he let her try anyway—it was only a few feet to the docks and she looked kind of cute when she was so determined.
“You got something, Bill Junior?” he heard a deep booming voice say. He thought the voice sounded familiar; something about the slight Texas twang alerted his memory. He looked at the two fishermen at the dock. One was massive; even from a distance Carter could see the man’s muscles bulging beneath his gear. The man he was with was much shorter, and soft looking, chubby almost. Carter guessed it was a father and son out for a day of fishing. They were dressed in identical dark-green waders, khaki vests, and floppy camouflage hats. If he ever had a son, he might like to do that. His grandfather had taken him fishing a few times. His father never had, but then again his father had spent most of his childhood at work.
“Come on, Rube.” He took the oar away from her. “I think that boat in the middle has got our name on it.”
“Reel it in, Junior,” they heard as they got closer. “That’s it. You’ve got a big one on there. Look at that! Your first fish of the year! That’ll cook up nicely for dinner tomorrow.” The man slapped his son on the back. “Now take it off the hook and toss it in the cooler.”
“I don’t want to take it off the hook. You do it.”
“Oh, don’t be such a girl!”
“I am a girl, Daddy!” Carter recognized that voice yet he couldn’t stop himself from approaching them just as Belinda was ripping the hat from her head. “See? A girl with boobies and everything.”
“Aw, Bill Junior! Don’t say stuff like that to me.”
“Why not? You seem to forget I’m a daughter and not a son.”
“I don’t. I just like my girls a little tougher is all.”
“Really? You married Mamá and she is the girliest girl on the planet.”
“Yeah, well, I just married her. I don’t like to hang out with her. I like to hang out with you.”
“Oh, Dad.” She sighed, grabbed the fish, and pulled it off the hook. “This is the grossest thing I have ever done ever, but I’m a tough bitch and I don’t want you forgetting that.”
Belinda’s father ruffled her hair. Now Carter recalled how he knew his voice. Bill Gordon was one of the best damn ballplayers in the history of the game. He remembered watching him as a kid—his grandfather had taken him to a game when they came to New York on a trip. It was funny that he ended up married to his daughter twenty years later.
“That’s my girl.”
She grinned at him and then proceeded to wipe her hand on his shirt. It was funny that he would meet Belinda here again. In the same park. At the same lake she’d fallen into. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get the image of her out of his head—t
he one with her clothes plastered to her soaking-wet body. He went to sleep with that image in his mind. He went to sleep remembering the passion that had overtaken them a few days ago. He went to bed missing it, missing the way his few minutes with her had taken the hollowness away.
“Belinda?” Ruby called softly as she walked ahead of him a bit. He didn’t stop her, even though he knew it was a bad idea to approach Belinda. He couldn’t make himself turn away.
Belinda turned and smiled genuinely at her. “Hey, baby doll!”
“I didn’t know you was gonna be here today. My daddy is gonna take me in a boat.”
“I’m here with my daddy, too. We’re fishing.” She looked over to Carter then, her smile quickly dropping from her face. For a moment he thought he saw hurt in her eyes, but she quickly covered it. “Hello, Carter.”
“Carter?” Bill Gordon turned at the name. His big hulking frame moved quickly toward Carter, and for a moment Carter was sure a broken nose was in his future. But Belinda grabbed her father’s massive hand and held it between her own, stopping him from doing any bodily harm.
“Dad, I want you to meet my friend Ruby.” She gave her father a very pointed look and then smiled down at Ruby.
“Ruby?” Bill gently removed his hand from Belinda’s and scooped Ruby up. Carter’s instincts kicked in, and he stepped forward. He knew his child. He knew how uncomfortable she was around strangers, and Belinda’s father was a giant.
But Belinda grabbed his hand this time, saying nothing—just watching her father with Ruby.
“Ruby? They should have called you Diamond, because you are just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. Look at this girl, Bill Junior! Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Gorgeous.”
Ruby surprised him by giggling. Immediately Carter felt himself relax. She wasn’t scared. Maybe she was growing out of her shyness, or maybe the Gordons just had a welcoming way about them.
“Oh, look at that. She’s missing teeth! That’s the damn cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I guess I should be introducing myself. I’m Mr. Gordon, Ruby. I’m glad to meet you.”
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